A Ship of Distinction
by lydia the eleventh
Summary: The Dauntless came from obscurity to distinction, from stagnation to ferocity, her destiny entwined with her favored officer, James Norrington. A series of oneshots, detailing the pair and their relations.
1. Consciousness

**(Author's Note – This oneshot goes off ideas and a pairing brought up in my other, _A Thousand Times Before_. I have decided I rather like James/_Dauntless_, and wrote this to give the _Dauntless _a voice and story of her own. I hope to write more, but if it's terrible tell me to shut up!)**

**Beginnings**

To begin at the beginning, at least for me, I suppose one would have to trace my roots back to an oak forest in the north of England, but I won't bore you with my thoroughly wooden and uninteresting origins. Suffice to say that my family had been there since the forest was new, and had been there, in our hereditary splendor ever since. I was a girl of good background, I flattered myself that my looks were not at all ill, and my inheritance was enough to tempt any suitor. But, I found as years dragged on, life was terribly dull. When I finally came of an age where I was teetering between youth and spinsterhood, I finally settled for a thoroughly, painfully dull life. I told myself I expected no more than to be alone and obscure, to expect nothing, though from birth I had thought of myself as going places and being frightfully important, at least to someone. My parents passed on, leaving me with my sisters, all of whom grew silent and grim over the years. It was only I who remained to speak for us all.

Years wore on, and I felt myself, too, growing silent. I didn't want to go, to simply fade away into nothing, but I saw nothing remaining for me – no family, no friends, no hope. I still saw the beauty in the falling leaves, in the rise of the sun and the light in the morning dew, but winter's icy splendor held a fatal pull which became harder and harder to resist every year. Times were that I danced in the blizzard's gusts and let its frosty fingers dig into my soul, only to be too frightened of the beyond to let winter finish the job.

I don't know how much time passed in such a state, with me remaining alone in that forest. I had no company, no people about me. There was no one but me to watch over the last of my family's domain. No one but me to marvel at the world. No one but me to wonder just where everything and everyone had gone.

Memories were all I had left. I remembered when I thought, someday, I should travel the wide earth. I thought I should be known the world over. The things which kept me obscure, and in this dreary wood, were the things which kept me alive. Perhaps that was why I sought death – if I perished, I could leave, as I saw fit.

One will soon learn of me, that freedom – ah, freedom – is my life.

One day whatever higher power there was saw fit to grant my wish of freedom, though I thought it was the end. It was a summer afternoon, like every other which had passed in my existence. Dozing in the ancient oak branches, I heard something which had not been heard in ages: voices.

I watched in horror as a gang of men armed with axes and saws marched through, leaving a wide wake of silence and fear. The forests were uneasy, that much I could tell. They set to work with a will, cutting down many noble trees of my long acquaintance, eventually my sisters. When there were few left, and the sun was almost down, they turned their blades toward me. It was the end, I told myself. I felt myself falling from the stand where I had stood for centuries. What was this one instant to the eternity I had suffered? It would soon be over. Or so I thought.

Time soon told that it was not over, at least for me. My consciousness remained, though I was torn from everything – my roots, my land, my life. I was dragged overland, in a cart with my broken sisters, bound for a fearsome lumber mill. They were torn up into bits and pieces, but they left me intact, only smoothing rough edges. Perhaps this was my destiny coming into play, I thought. Perhaps I was destined for greater things than to be a simple spirit my entire life.

I was divided from my sisters the next day, never to see them again as I traveled by sea toward a place named London, and the Chatham Dockyard in particular. I can trace, when I think about it, everything to that three day's sail. It was then I decided, for the rest of my life, I wished to be at sea. When we came to this Chatham Dockyard, they used me as the keel of a new ship being laid down – a first rate ship of the line.

It was at this moment I ceased to be a simple, overactive spirit of little distinction, and became instead the spirit of the _Dauntless_.

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As they continued to build, they used wood left bare of anything living, like me, so I spread unchecked, until I was a part of every timber, nail, piece of caulking and coat of paint, every pane of glass, every yard of rope, every inch of canvas. It was a curious experience for me, to be something that was not myself, but I reveled in it, watching the water flow by just beyond my reach, and knew, that not too far from now I would be free of the land and that which bound me. I became adjusted. I began to walk in the shadows at night, surrounded by activity but still alone.

Perhaps if one were to speak to the gang of men who built me, one would find among them a few who believed they had seen – glimpsed, really – a woman, a stately, graceful, ageless woman, whose form spoke of endurance through time, and definitely ghostly in appearance.

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It was a while before the finished me, and even more time before they fitted me out for a long voyage. I heard where I was headed on the whispers of the men – Port Royal. I had no idea where that was, but it sounded exotic, and with the water coursing beneath my keel, I was ready to go wherever the wind took me.

Men started to board me, cluttering my decks and hanging from the rigging, and I knew I had to be more cautious – people did not usually take to well to seeing me. Some men I found I disliked instantly, others I was more ambivalent towards. I wanted someone who would take me places, the whole world over, even. I didn't see that in anyone, either officer or swab – certainly not in the captain (a stodgy old fellow, capable but thoroughly uninteresting), or even the first officer (quite an un-ambitious man), or anyone, even, though I saw the spark in some of the midshipmen. The last day before we hoisted anchor, I watched in despair as the last men trickled aboard. I was about to give up, and sink back into the timbers, when a shrill call announced to one and all the arrival of the last officer, the 2nd lieutenant.

Sometimes in life one realizes things without reason or just cause for knowing them. This was one of those moments. The moment he set well shod foot on my decks, I knew. I knew he was the man who would take me places.

Then again, perhaps there was just cause for me to instantly love this man. Maybe I could read the signs of destiny in his sure footsteps, steely posture, and authoritative voice. Maybe it was the glint in his unnaturally green eyes, the faint scar below his left, or the way even the elements seemed to favor him. Maybe it was because every man on deck, even the captain, seemed to bow before him. And it may well be some things just were.

Whatever the case, I knew this man was the man for me, Lieutenant James Norrington.


	2. The Quality of Addiction

**(Author's Note – Sorry for the long while for an update … Thank you, thank you, thank you to my lovely reviewers!)**

**The Quality of Addiction**

In my life, from my long-ago days in the forest to my deep destiny, I have valued only two things. No, that is wrong, perhaps valued would be the wrong word – It was something stronger. Loved? Perhaps, though those ties were even stronger than love, though I hardly know a word deeper than love. Love it is, then, if only because I know no better word than it.

In my life I have loved twice, two things I felt I could never possess and could never live without.

The first realized was freedom; discovered between the rolling waves and buffeting zephyrs of my first, brief sea voyage. All freedom meant then was no roots, no earth, no stability – only the endless ocean and uncertainty. When I left the Chatham Dockyards on my maiden voyage, feeling the rush of icy water under my keel, and the whirlwind of trade winds coursing through my rigging, I felt so alive I was sure of immortality. Everything was that one moment – the sea, the sky, and me. I was so irrevocably alive, for the first time in centuries!

And then, on the second day, when they hauled out every sheet I could carry and bent every sail they could find, I was in love. I was queen of the sea, then, swooping over swells under my own cloud, a cloud of virgin white sails.

While I worshiped this newfound quality of freedom, there was yet another item which I loved equally – Lieutenant James Norrington.

I walked in his shadow during the day; I sat on the edge of his cot at night. I couldn't get enough of him. Never before had I seen the likes of him, and I knew I would never, could never, see anyone like him ever again. He had, as I have already said, the air of destiny about him, and by the time had spent a mere day in his presence, I knew I would do whatever I could to be a part of it.

The romantics would say it was love at first sight. The cynics would call it lust. I stood between. I needed him, as we traveled onward across the Atlantic – like an opium addict his pipe, so I needed James Norrington. I needed to hear his voice, to have him take the helm. And I loved him.

I started talking to him, before long, first only at nights when I was sure he was asleep, and then when he was awake. It was a fine joke when he first heard me, thinking his men were playing a prank on him, but when I persisted, he finally came to believe in me. He started to talk to me, to answer and to laugh. He told me about his family, his life, about things I knew he had never said to anyone before, and has never said to anyone since.

And before I knew it, I stepped out of the shadows of his cabin.

Whether I had been bound to him since my consciousness, or whether I became bound to him after that night, I never knew, but the fact remains I was bound to him and him to me. Curse or blessing? Beginning or end? It was all four and none at all; it was, simultaneously, the beginning of one thing, the beginning of the end, and the end; I was in love but I was addicted, and no good thing has ever come of an addiction.


End file.
